Sunlight on a Broken column

‘Sunlight on a Broken Colum’ is a novel written by Indian novelist Atia Hossain, which earned remarkable reputation for her from all across the world. It was written during the freedom fight of India. The author in this novel quite efficiently sketched the social and fundamental changes that India witnessed after freedom. It is a first person narrative where the protagonist of the novel Laila, narrated the story.

The writer, in her novel ‘Sunlight on a Broken Column’ preciously drew the social scenario of the city Lucknow. She mentioned in the novel about the rich sculpture and arts of the city. The story is about a Muslim patriarchal family where men were regarded as the head. Laila, who was the granddaughter of Baba Jan, lost her parents at young age and stayed with Baba Jan. The main themes of the novel are about the deprivation of girls from their basic rights, the changing social condition of the nation and transformation in the consideration of people. Other than that the writer also put light on the fact about the riots between Hindu and Muslims during the post-independent India.  

In the novel the writer talked about several women characters, who possessed different perspectives about lives. Laila is among those who wanted to have her own identity and optimistic about continuing with her education despite the social barrier. On the other hand her cousin Zehara, had quite opposite view towards life. She would love to be within the restricted boundaries of society and deemed marriage just a mere tool to enjoy freedom. Besides, the educated affluent women the writer had also mentioned about few others like Nandi, Saliman the servants of the house. Nandi, who was quite straight forward and know how to obtain her rights, had a contradictory character than Salima. Apart from that Aunt Abida and Sita were among the other important characters of the novel.

In a patriarchal society, where men practiced all the domination over women including deciding the happiness of women, Atia Hossian portrayed in her novel that how girls were exploited by the men. Aunt Abida, who was a talented lady, became a burden to her brother after her father’s death and to just get rid of that burden her brother fixed her marriage with a widower without even getting the consent of Aunt Abida. This marriage was just a social formality to her as she could never live the life happily the way she foresaw before marriage.

Laila, who is the protagonist of the novel went to college and overcame all the prevailing restriction of family. She had a love marriage with Ameer, against the whim of her family. The marriage didn’t turn out to be a happy one a she lost her husband just few years after marriage. Here, the novelist pictured the social condition of Muslim families who were mostly conservative when it came to religion matters and marriage. After the death of Baba Jan, Uncle Hamid took charge of the family. He was a modern person and supported Laila’s education, however, with time it was revealed that Uncle Hamid possessed great desire for any of his son’s (cousin of Laila) to marry Laila. In Muslim families it was quite prevailing to arrange marriage within family. One of the main reasons for his desire to make Laila his daughter in-law was just to ensure that the property didn’t go out his hand.

The novel grew revolving the transformation of Laila from a fifteen years old girl to thirty five years old woman. The writer aptly pointed out the changes in the socio-cultural aspects of the nation, where people started considering life from a different vantage point of view than few years ago. With time the family structure of Aashiana, the house where Laila and her family used to stay, had changed dramatically. The third generation that is Laila, Keemal and Salman were more likely to go for a separate house than to stay in a joint family. They loved their immediate family and tended to stay separated from their extended family members. While, all these were going on the tension between Hindu and Mulims grew which often turned into vicious clashes and losing lots of lives purposelessly.

The last part of the novel is all about Laila’ recalling her past days in Aashiana. Through her eyes the writer shed light on the fact that how the social and cultural milieu of independent India had changed and at the same time we also saw the usher of new happiness in Laila’s life through Asad.